A group of three men stormed a village police station on Cyprus yesterday to release a friend who had been arrested a little earlier but their breakout was foiled when they went for treatment to the same hospital as the officers they had just injured.

The three men overpowered four officers at the Pegia police station near the southwest coastal town of Paphos and escaped with their 27-year-old friend who had been arrested only a few hours earlier for assaulting a policeman.

The officers were injured in the attack and were taken to Paphos General Hospital for treatment, where they ran into the men who had attacked them.

The island’s Public Order Minister Kypros Chrysostomidis condemned the incident and ordered an investigation into it.